Mylai Tamil Font for preparation of Texts in Tamil Script on Computers

Mylai Tamil Font for preparation of Texts in Tamil Script on Computers

INTRODUCTION

MYLAI is a Tamil font created by Dr. K.Kalyanasundaram (of the Swiss Federal Inst. of
Technology at Lausanne, Switzerland) primarily as a medium for archiving and distributing
tamil electronic texts on the Internet.
The following is a sample tamil text prepared using the Mylai tamil font:

The font is available in two identical formats - truetype form for use on
MS-Windows (3.x, 95 and NT) and Macintosh PCs . Once installed in the system, the
tamil font can be used on almost all applications supported by Windows/Macintosh OSs.
(word processing such as Word/Word Perfect, graphics such asCoral Draw, database such as
Excel and so on). Postscript/type1 version is also available for use on Macintoshes.

NEW: Mylai tamil font is now available as a bit-mapped font file
(.bdf ) (free!!) for use on UNIX machines. For details on direct downloading
from internet and instructions on installation, use
please visit the Murasu Anjal Webpage.
The mylai font for UNIX is bundled along with similar Inaimathi font of Anjal and will get
installed when you install Anjal.

During the past five years I have been heavily involved with fellow Cyber-community
Tamilians towards development of a STANDARD FONT ENCODING SCHEME FOR USE IN
ALL INFORMATION INTERCHANGE THROUGH INTERNET. At the last TAMIL INTERNET
2001 conference held in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, bilingual encoding schemes TSCII and
TAB have been recommended
as preferred schemes for use in the Internet.
Several Tamil Text Editors based on these TSCII and TAB encodings are now available free
on the Net and majority of them have implemented Text input as per
Mylai Keyboard Layout .
Hence we strongly encourage all Tamil users to shift to TSCII and TAB encodings for all
information interchanges through Internet. Text convertors are also available for conversion
of Mylai based Tamil texts to these TSCII, TAB encodings.

In view of the presence of glyphs corresponding
to old -style Tamil characters (e.g, old style Raa, Naa, naa, lai, ...), we continue to distribute
Mylai font for these special need cases.

FEATURES OF MYLAI TAMIL FONT

KEYMAP

The keymapping used in Mylai font is based on two principles:
Phonetic link of the Tamil character being typed with the corresponding Roman character
and Frequency of occurrence of characters. Thus you type k to get letter ka, ka for kaa,
ki for ki, kI for kii, mi for mi, pa for paa etc. The keymapping in the form of a compact
table can be consulted any time on the
Mylai Keymap Info. Page . We strongly recommend readers to consult the web
page of Prof. T.R. Chari on mylai keymap. This gives more detailed information on the location of
various tamil characters in the form of several tables and explanatory notes.

USAGE OF MYLAI FONT IN ELECTRONIC MAIL AND IN WEB PAGES

Mylai font uses the standard 128 ASCII keys to compose the entire 256 tamil
characters and the common sanskrit/grantha characters. So tamil files created using
this font can be exchanged electronically (via email) in plain text form without
loss of accuracy. The receipient at the other end simply has to open the file/mail
on his word-processor and change the font to Mylai to be able to read the email
locally in Tamil. Numerous electronic texts of ancient tamil texts are stored in
the archives this way and they can be readily downloaded via anon.ftp.

The font is of the "proportional" type and hence bilingual Web pages can be
set up where a fixed font such as Times can be used to english/roman texts and
the proportional font (Mylai) to display the tamil materials. For details see
the web page on guidelines
for setting up of tamil web pages.

MYLAI DISTRIBUTION

The mylai tamil font can be obtained FREE OF COST (direct download on internet!)
for the personal use of individuals and non-profit organizations. You can download a copy
of the font free right from this page if you agree to the following conditions:

1. Mylai Tamil font and its keymapping are copyright protected and their ownership
rests with Dr. Kalyanasundaram.
Any use of the font for purposes other than those listed in this page is illegal.

2. The font is for the personal use of individuals and non-profit
organizations only. Any use of the font for profit or by commercial organizations should
have the prior written approval of the author and developer, Dr. Kalyanasundaram.

3. Distribution of the font to individuals by third parties should include a text
version of this page suitably modified (e.g a file entitled Readme in plain text in
the font package bundle) along with the font file(s).

4. Commercial organizations (computer firms) and individual software developers
are encouraged to distribute the font along with the computer hardware and develop
softwares that use Mylai tamil font. But they should get prior written approval
from Dr. Kalyanasundaram before such distribution or selling of the software packages
incorporating Mylai font.

5. Disclaimer:
The font was created by the author (Dr. Kalyanasundaram) after an investment of
substantial personal time and resources and is distributed to others purely as a
service and on a private basis. Neither Dr. Kalyanasundaram nor his present
employer (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) nor those distributing the font
through internet Web pages give any warranty for any damages caused upon usage of
these fonts.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE TRUETYPE FONT FOR WINDOWS PCs:

The font is distributed as three individual files bundled in a self-executing
mylai.exe file:

i) this page suitably modified and in plain text (entitled Readme);

ii) the TrueType Mylai font file MYP.TTF; and

iii) Keymap.doc, a MS Word document that explains the location of various
characters (keyboard mapping) and the instructions on the usage of the font.

Use WinZip or other utilities to "unzip" the archive file to get the contents: mylai.ttf font, README and keymap doc files. If you have obtained a
copy of the font file from other web sites, follow the procedure outlined below.
Use the Fonts utility found in the Control Panel of the Program Manager (Windows 3.1),
or the Control Panel of the Settings menu (Windows 95) and add Mylai font to the
font directory (folder)of Windows.
Mylai font should be properly installed before you open or read/print the
keymap.doc file. Otherwise, the Tamil texts in the keymap file will not be
displayed in Tamil.
If you find any difficulty in installing Mylai font on a PC, please let
me know or to Prof. T.R. Chari .

DISTRIBUTION OF THE POSTSCRIPT TYPE 1 FONT FOR MACINTOSH

The font is distributed as a self-expanding (.sea) archive in binary form.
The Mylai.sea archive has four files:

The font is installed simply by dragging the font folder and the Postscript printer
driver file onto the system folder icon (on system 7.x). On Macs running under
older systems (6.x) use the Fonts/DA accessory to install the fonts.

Mylai font should be properly installed before you open or read/print the keymap
info file. Otherwise, the Tamil texts in the keymap file will not be displayed properly.
If you find any difficulty in installing Mylai font on a Macintosh, please
contact
me.

ALTERNATE FONT FACES CORRESPONDING TO MYLAI KEYMAP

APPEAL: In view of limited time at my disposal and my commitment to build the tamil
electronic library, I am not spending any time to build new tamil font faces
(even though there is a big demand for them). Since there are nearly 20000+ users
of mylai font around the world, font producers are strongly encouraged to adopt the
mylai keymapping. This way the availability of tamil font in different font faces can
increase.

Dr. K. Srinivasan of Montreal, Canada (author of Adami, Adhawin,... and other
softwares for tamil) is now offering FREE a copy of
his Mylai-sri tamil font, corresponding to mylai keymapping. For direct
download, visit Dr. Srinivasan's
webpage .

MYLAI KEYBOARD INPUT METHOD AVAILABLE IN OTHER TEXT EDITORS

In view of the large number of users worldwide content with the Mylai
keymap based input, some of the leading Tamil software developers have incorporated
Mylai keymap based input as an "option" in their Text Editors.
e.g., Murasu Anjal of Muthu Nedumaran
and Suvadi of Elango Sampandam. Using Keyboard Editors, it is possible to
prepare a Tamil Text using any Tamil font but as per the Mylai input method.

For this purpose, Mylai keymap has been slightly revised taking into account
the frequency of occurrence of various Tamil alphabets in a typical text.
The
revised keymap is available as a compact image file . Users of these
softwares are strongly encouraged to use this Mylai keyboard input method.

TAMIL ELECTRONIC LIBRARY

A Tamil Electronic Library available on the Internet is being built based on the
Mylai tamil
font. Electronic Texts (etext) of ancient tamil classical texts are being made
available at this site along with information of interest to Tamil community.
Detailed information on this project can be found at the
Tamil Electronic Library Web Site

MYLAI WEB FORUM

In the last five years, several thousands of internet users have obtained
a free copy of the Mylai Tamil font and have been using it successfully on
Macintosh and Windows-based PCs. The mylai tamil font users spread across the
entire globe (Continental US, Hawaii, Alaska, most of the European countries, Gulf
states, India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Australasia, Japan, .....).

This forum has been set up to promote such exchange of tamil based materials
whenever people use the Mylai tamil font to create these materials. In
the initial stage, this Web page will provide all available info. on Tamil Materials
that have been prepared using the Mylai Tamil font - materials that their authors
are willing to share with the internet audience!
Please visit the
Mylai Web Forum page for more details.